Senate Judiciary Committee Set to Consider Gun Legislation

The Senate Judiciary Committee will begin to consider four separate gun safety measures on Thursday, although the process of narrowing actual legislative language will most likely dribble into next week.

Among the measures to be pondered is one that would reinstate the expired assault weapons ban and place limits on high-capacity magazines, offered by Senator Dianne Feinstein, Democrat of California. The notion of such a ban has been radioactive among Republicans and many Democrats, especially those up for re-election in conservative states in 2014.

Also under consideration is a bill sponsored by Senator Patrick J. Leahy, Democrat of Vemont and chairman of the committee, which would address the problem of illegal gun trafficking; a measure offered by Senator Barbara Boxer, Democrat of California, that would improve school safety; and a “placeholder” proposal concerning universal background checks written by Senator Charles E. Schumer, Democrat of New York, as he attempts to work out a bipartisan version with Senator Tom Coburn, Republican of Oklahoma and a staunch Second Amendment supporter. The talks betw! een Mr. Schumer and Mr. Coburn have stalled over a provision that would require records to be kept of private gun sales.

President Obama has asked Congress to take up measures that would create a universal background check system for gun sales and enhanced tools to stem “straw purchases” of guns for criminals who cannot pass background checks. He has also called for reinstating the assault weapons ban, which expired in 2004, and tightening limits on the capacity of some ammunition magazines, which, as its own measure, enjoys more support from lawmakers than an outright ban of assault weapons.

The growing consensus on Capitol Hill is that a bill that addresses only the improvements to the background check system has the best chance of reaching a bipartisan consensus, although the National Rifle Association, which once supported such a measure, is now opposed to one.

Debating ‘House of Cards’ 2: How to Reap the Cable Whirlwind

Welcome back to “House of Cards,” the Recap. Today, Ashley Parker and David Carr take on episode two and tease apart the collaborations between the various estates in Washington. Abundant spoilers so proceed at your own viewing peril. If you missed the first installment, you can read it here. More to come in the next few days and in the meantime, please consider weighing in with a comment below.

Episode Two
Synopsis: With the help of Zoe Barnes, Frank Underwood plants a story that will prove the undoing of Michael Kern, the president’s pick for secretary of state. Mr. Underwood also dispatches with the original author of the much-lauded education bill and begins rewriting it himself alongside a team of young aides.

Parker: This was the episode where we got to see the president’s original nominee for secretaryof state, Michael Kern, spiral downward into national news chum. The catalyst An original specious story by none other than Zoe Barnes, of course, loosely tying Mr. Kern to an anti-Israel editorial that ran in the college paper he edited. First, the image of Mr. Kerns trying to laugh off the charge on the Sunday shows goes viral and inflames supporters of Israel (“We do not consider the issue of Israel and Palestine a laughing matter,” says the president of the Anti-Defamation League), Mr. Kern’s subsequent stutter-stepping angers the Arab community, and by the end of the episode, he’s withdrawn his nomination.

Welcome to a Washington news cycle.

For all Ms. Barnes’s talk of going “online,” the “House of Cards” news cycle was driven in the traditional way, by front page stories in the morning paper, and the news shows on Sunday. In reality, Tweets and blogs and chattering pundits would have also played a leading role.

But it was interesting to watch this episode ag! ainst the backdrop of the Chuck Hagel confirmation process that’s unfolding now. Mr. Hagel’s secretary of defense nomination began in a fireball, with the former Republican senator having to apologize for past comments he’d made about gays and Israel. Then Senator Ted Cruz, Republican of Texas, raised questions about honorariums Mr. Hagel may or may not have received from sketchy sources (“I’m saying, it’s a question worth asking,” Mr. Underwood tells Ms. Barnes on the show) and then the whole nomination was sidetracked by a completely false charge that Mr. Hagel had taken money from a group called “Friends of Hamas.” (No such group even exists).

But David, what did you make of this “House of Cards” news cycle, which really seems to get away from its characters â€" the White House, the nominee â€" and suddenly, no matter what they try, just can’t be reined back in

Carr: I was struck by the same thing. Given the habits of the controlling habits of this curent (real-life) administration, that the media tail rarely wags the dog. But sometimes, given the overheated news cycle, custody of a story goes up for grabs. The series does a great job of showing the echo chamber as it builds to a roar, drowning out any actual debate.

I love the scene where Mr. Underwood watches the nominee nervously laugh at the wrong moment and, realizing his work is done, simply clicks off the television and moves on to the next delicious morsel.

There is something operatic and over-the-top about Mr. Underwood that both attracts and repels. For example, he deadpans to the camera: “You know what I like about people They stack so well,” Who says that No one, but it is still fun to watch. In the same way, the surreptitious meetings between Zoe Barnes and Frank Underwood against spooky federal backdrops and subway stops are hilarious. What congressman retails his own leaks to journalists Isn’t that what staffers are for Still, it makes for good television and puts ! the two s! trivers â€" one a congressman in search of payback and the other a journalist on the make â€" in the same frame.

The show continues to get the newsroom stuff pretty much right on the nose. Constance Zimmer is near perfect playing the experienced. world-weary senior reporter Janine Skorsky. I recognize her. She is a good reporter and a serious person in a changing world, trying to maintain her footing and her standards. First she ignores Zoe Barnes and her greasy approach to the craft, then she attempts to push back when it is clear Ms. Barnes may be a threat. “You were a metro scrub and now look at you,” she says, half in wonder and half in disgust.

In the same way, watching Ms. Barnes steady herself for her first remote cable news hit is very good meta-television. Everything she wants, everything she hopes to be, everything she is striving for, is on the other side of that lens. When the camera lights up - three, two, one â€" so does she. Zoe Barnes, the byline, has arrived.

Prker: In the last decade, television and print journalism have become so inextricably bound that it’s hard to imagine one without the other. There was a time â€" or so I’m told â€" when print journalists were simply print journalists: they reported, they wrote, and they left the on-air prognosticating to those folks whose silky hair and blessed bone structure seemed destined for television gigs.

Now, all reporters are expected to report, write, blog, Tweet, Instagram, shoot video, do radio hits and appear on television. Often, it feels like, all at once. But the reach of television, as Ms. Barnes seems to intuit, is still stunning. Write a lead, A1 story that drives the conversation, and you may get a “good job” from your editor and your mom; appear on a midday cable show for three minutes, and old high school classmates will mysteriously materialize in your inbox, to say how impressed they were to look up and catch you on their screen. (What, you almost want to ask the former ! star socc! er player, were you doing watching CNN at 1:43 p.m. on a Tuesday)

But just as Mr. Underwood watches Ms. Barnes deliver her scoop live on-air, so do real-life aides, staffers and politicians watch reporters say their piece on cable news. And that television-elevated profile, in part, can be what makes sources more likely to talk to you, the reporter, in the future.

The Mitt Romney campaign was notoriously tight-lipped and disciplined. Some senior staffers had an ability to go days without ever responding to press e-mails and phone calls. But my press corps colleagues, who also did cable hits from time to time, said the quickest way to get a sure-fire response from Team Romney was to shoot them an e-mail that read, “I’m going on MSNBC in 10 minutes, and I need to know …” Only then did the floodgates briefly open.

What if the Republicans Had Won the Senate

Alternative history is a popular niche in fiction. What would the world look like if Pickett had carried the day at Gettysburg  What if the Japanese had prevailed at Midway How different would current events be if President Kennedy’s assassination had been thwarted

A similar exercise is being conducted in Washington these days as President Obama and Congressional Republicans engage in a series of grinding showdowns over fiscal policy, nominations, gun laws and immigration changes, with more to come. In light of the implications of the partisan divide, it seems a fair question to ask: What would the political landscape in Washington look like if the Republicans had won the Senate last November

Given how the election played out, it isn’t a stretch to imagine an Obama presidency and a Republican Senate, along with continued Republican control of the House.  With Mr. Obama’s re-election, Republicans needed to gain four seats to win the majority.  Democrats won five seats in states won by Mitt Romney, the Republican nominee, four of them in races where Republicans started out with big advantages: Indiana, Missouri, Montana and North Dakota.

Victories there would have made Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky the majority leader while making Mr. Obama miserable, since a Republican Senate held the potential to significantly reshape the contours of the president’s second term.

It is clear that if Richard Mourdock, Todd Akin, Denny Rehberg and Rick Berg were now casting votes in the Senate, the national political dynamic would be sharply different. In the building fight over the across-the-board spending cuts set to take effect Friday, the Republican-controlled Congress would probably be dictating terms to Mr. Obama, sending him legislation that would redistribute the cuts away from the Pentagon to social programs that Democrats would be unable to protect.

Former Senator Chuck Hagel would not be about to clear a filibuster to become secretary of defense! , but wou! ld instead be bottled up in committee, perhaps along with John O. Brennan, awaiting a vote on his nomination to head the Central Intelligence Agency, and Jack Lew, the nominee for Treasury secretary. John Kerry would still be at the State Department, but his confirmation might have been bumpier.

Even the lame-duck session would have been different. It seems implausible that Mr. Obama would have been able to stare down soon-to-be-majority Congressioal Republicans over the Bush tax cuts. Instead, Republicans could have held out for all the cuts to remain in place and then tried to force the issue when the 113th Congress convened with them in control.

The Newtown shootings would still have spurred discussion in Congress about tighter gun laws, but it is highly doubtful that debate about new background checks and limits on magazine size would be as serious as it is. As for immigration policy, the lack of Hispanic support that helped doom Mr. Romney’s presidential bid would have provided strong reason for Republicans to explore changes in immigration law. But would a path to citizenship be on the table, given conservative resistance

And instead of using nominations to try to pry information out of the White House, Senate Republicans would have ! been empo! wered to conduct oversight hearings of the kind that can tie a second-term administration in knots.

Then there is the one aspect of a Republican Senate that might most frighten Democrats.

“Ted Cruz would be in the majority,” Senator Amy Klobuchar, a Minnesota Democrat re-elected in November, said about the confrontational Republican newcomer from Texas, who is already making his presence felt in the minority.

Republicans acknowledge that they have occasionally given wistful thought to what might have been.

“Maybe after a few bers,” said Senator Rob Portman, Republican of Ohio.  He, like other Republicans, believes that Congress and the country would be much better off if Republicans had taken over as a counterweight to the president, creating a unified Congress able to reach some agreement on thorny policy issues.

“If those five seats had gone the other way, we’d have a budget right now, the appropriations process would be working, it would just be very different,” Mr. Portman said. “It happened over two election cycles, so they kind of add up, but if we can even get a slim majority we can get a budget.”

Ms. Klobuchar said she thought the divided Congress offered more potential for true compromise than a Republican House and Senate constantly confronting a Democratic president.  With the Senate in Democratic hands and the House! under Re! publicans, lawmakers will have to reach consensus agreements on the tough issues of guns, immigration and spending if they want to see them enacted.

“I think this is just a better situation,” she said. “Instead of Congress versus the president, you at least have something in the middle, which is the Senate.”

Moving forward, Republicans will no doubt continue to rue the losses that kept them in the Senate minority. For instance, a Supreme Court seat could open up, and Republicans won’t have the same leverage they might have had to push Mr. Obama toward a pick that could clear a Republican-led Senate.

But that might just be more incentive for Republicans to try to seize that majority in the elections next year.

“You have to live with the reality of it,” said Senator John Barrasso, Reublican of Wyoming. “You just work that much harder for 2014.”

Jennifer Steinhauer contributed reporting.

Follow Carl Hulse on Twitter at @hillhulse.

What if the Republicans Had Won the Senate

Alternative history is a popular niche in fiction. What would the world look like if Pickett had carried the day at Gettysburg  What if the Japanese had prevailed at Midway How different would current events be if President Kennedy’s assassination had been thwarted

A similar exercise is being conducted in Washington these days as President Obama and Congressional Republicans engage in a series of grinding showdowns over fiscal policy, nominations, gun laws and immigration changes, with more to come. In light of the implications of the partisan divide, it seems a fair question to ask: What would the political landscape in Washington look like if the Republicans had won the Senate last November

Given how the election played out, it isn’t a stretch to imagine an Obama presidency and a Republican Senate, along with continued Republican control of the House.  With Mr. Obama’s re-election, Republicans needed to gain four seats to win the majority.  Democrats won five seats in states won by Mitt Romney, the Republican nominee, four of them in races where Republicans started out with big advantages: Indiana, Missouri, Montana and North Dakota.

Victories there would have made Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky the majority leader while making Mr. Obama miserable, since a Republican Senate held the potential to significantly reshape the contours of the president’s second term.

It is clear that if Richard Mourdock, Todd Akin, Denny Rehberg and Rick Berg were now casting votes in the Senate, the national political dynamic would be sharply different. In the building fight over the across-the-board spending cuts set to take effect Friday, the Republican-controlled Congress would probably be dictating terms to Mr. Obama, sending him legislation that would redistribute the cuts away from the Pentagon to social programs that Democrats would be unable to protect.

Former Senator Chuck Hagel would not be about to clear a filibuster to become secretary of defense! , but wou! ld instead be bottled up in committee, perhaps along with John O. Brennan, awaiting a vote on his nomination to head the Central Intelligence Agency, and Jack Lew, the nominee for Treasury secretary. John Kerry would still be at the State Department, but his confirmation might have been bumpier.

Even the lame-duck session would have been different. It seems implausible that Mr. Obama would have been able to stare down soon-to-be-majority Congressioal Republicans over the Bush tax cuts. Instead, Republicans could have held out for all the cuts to remain in place and then tried to force the issue when the 113th Congress convened with them in control.

The Newtown shootings would still have spurred discussion in Congress about tighter gun laws, but it is highly doubtful that debate about new background checks and limits on magazine size would be as serious as it is. As for immigration policy, the lack of Hispanic support that helped doom Mr. Romney’s presidential bid would have provided strong reason for Republicans to explore changes in immigration law. But would a path to citizenship be on the table, given conservative resistance

And instead of using nominations to try to pry information out of the White House, Senate Republicans would have ! been empo! wered to conduct oversight hearings of the kind that can tie a second-term administration in knots.

Then there is the one aspect of a Republican Senate that might most frighten Democrats.

“Ted Cruz would be in the majority,” Senator Amy Klobuchar, a Minnesota Democrat re-elected in November, said about the confrontational Republican newcomer from Texas, who is already making his presence felt in the minority.

Republicans acknowledge that they have occasionally given wistful thought to what might have been.

“Maybe after a few bers,” said Senator Rob Portman, Republican of Ohio.  He, like other Republicans, believes that Congress and the country would be much better off if Republicans had taken over as a counterweight to the president, creating a unified Congress able to reach some agreement on thorny policy issues.

“If those five seats had gone the other way, we’d have a budget right now, the appropriations process would be working, it would just be very different,” Mr. Portman said. “It happened over two election cycles, so they kind of add up, but if we can even get a slim majority we can get a budget.”

Ms. Klobuchar said she thought the divided Congress offered more potential for true compromise than a Republican House and Senate constantly confronting a Democratic president.  With the Senate in Democratic hands and the House! under Re! publicans, lawmakers will have to reach consensus agreements on the tough issues of guns, immigration and spending if they want to see them enacted.

“I think this is just a better situation,” she said. “Instead of Congress versus the president, you at least have something in the middle, which is the Senate.”

Moving forward, Republicans will no doubt continue to rue the losses that kept them in the Senate minority. For instance, a Supreme Court seat could open up, and Republicans won’t have the same leverage they might have had to push Mr. Obama toward a pick that could clear a Republican-led Senate.

But that might just be more incentive for Republicans to try to seize that majority in the elections next year.

“You have to live with the reality of it,” said Senator John Barrasso, Reublican of Wyoming. “You just work that much harder for 2014.”

Jennifer Steinhauer contributed reporting.

Follow Carl Hulse on Twitter at @hillhulse.

Michelle Obama Makes a Star Turn at the Oscars (via Satellite)

Robyn Beck/Agence France-Presse â€" Getty Images Via video from the White House, Michelle Obama revealed the winner of Best Movie at the Academy Awards on Sunday night in Los Angeles, with help on stage from the actor Jack Nicholson.

She may not have walked the red carpet, but Michelle Obama â€" all bangs and biceps and bling â€" had her own star turn during Sunday night’s Academy Awards, when she announced the winner for best picture via satellite from th White House.

Mrs. Obama opened the shiny envelope opening revealing the winner, “Argo,” the Ben Affleck-directed film about a C.I.A. plan to rescue Americans from Iran during the hostage crisis, from the Diplomatic Room of the White House during a dinner for governors.

As she stood in a shimmering gown â€" designed by Naeem Khan, a favorite of the first lady â€" and surrounded by a group of White House military social aides, Mrs. Obama described the full list of nominees, many of them films with political undercurrents.

“These nine movies took us back in time and all around the world,” she said. “They made us laugh, they made us weep, and they made us grip our armrests just a little tighter. They taught us that love can endure against all odds and transform our lives in the most surprising ways, and they reminded us that we can overcome any obstacle if we can dig deep enough and fight hard enough and find the courage to believe in ourselves.”

Then, the gold envelo! pe was opened, “Argo” was declared the winner and the attention quickly returned to perhaps the only industry that makes Washington appear self-effacing.

“The Academy Awards approached the first lady about being a part of the ceremony,” said Kristina Schake, a spokeswoman for Mrs. Obama. “As a movie lover, she was honored to present the award and celebrate the artists who inspire us all, especially our young people, with their passion, skill and imagination.”

After lying low following an intense campaign season, Mrs. Obama has been trickling back onto the scene with some of her pet causes lately. Last week, to kick off the third year of her Let’s Move campaign, which encourages children to exercise, she appeared with Jimmy Fallon (dressed in drag) to present the “Evolution of Mom Dancing.”

She has also reunited with Big Bird for two public service announcements encouraging children to eat healthy and get active, in which the two demonstrate a love of healthy snacks and exercise. She will take that theme on the road this week to Mississippi, Illinois and Missouri, all in a clear signal that the campaign will remain a significant part of her second-term agenda.

On Monday, Mrs. Obama was scheduled to meet with a group of governors as the National Governors Association meeting comes to a close.

Q&A: Recommending Web Pages With the Google +1 Button

Q.

What happens if I click that +1 button on a Web site

A.

The +1 button on some Web pages is Google’s version of a personal-approval stamp or recommendation, similar to Facebook’s “Like” button for publicly declaring favorite things on a social network; you probably get the most out of the feature if you are a member of the Google Plus social network. The +1 button often appears on news and entertainment sites around the Web, usually next to Facebook’s “Like” button, and buttons to click for sharing the page by Twitter or e-mail. Other Google properties, like Google Maps, also host a +1 button.

When you click the +1 button on a eb page, your recommendation is noted on your own Google profile page. Google’s guide to the +1 button says you need to have a public Google Profile set up to use the +1 button.

If you happen to use Google Plus, the +1 button is more useful. You can see a list of all the Web sites and pages you have marked. These are listed under the “+1s” tab in the Profile area of your Google Plus page â€" which is helpful for collecting or just finding those pages again for reference.

The pages you have recommended can also turn up in the search results received by people who happen to be in your Google Plus “circles” of online friends and acquaintances. In those search results, your name appears next to links for pages you have favored, like those for restaurants or products, so your friends can take your opinion into account.

Religious Groups Urge Deficit Reduction and Protection of the Poor

Leaders from some of the nation’s largest and most influential Christian congregations are urging President Obama and members of Congress to end their fiscal brinkmanship and find a way to agree on new revenue and spending cuts that will reduce the deficit while protecting the poorest Americans.

In a public letter, to be released on Monday just days before severe budget cuts are scheduled to go into effect, the groups urge that the fiscal debate be framed in terms of “moral choices.” The letter blames both parties for slowing the country’s economic recovery and risking the possibility that more people will slide into poverty.

“Moving from one crisis to another has slowed economic recovery and has kept Congress from finding a sound, moral path to fiscal sustainability,” the letter says. “Other important issues o unaddressed, all the while increasing cynicism about our political process.”

Almost 100 pastoral leaders signed the letter, including the president of the National Association of Evangelicals, the presiding bishop of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, and the president of the National Baptist Convention.

The group calls itself the “Circle of Protection” and has organized to weigh in on political issues. The mission statement on the group’s Web site says it is committed to resisting “budget cuts that undermine the lives, dignity and rights of poor and vulnerable people.”

In the letter, the religious leaders use similar language to that of Mr. Obama in calling for what they call a “balanced and thoughtful” approach to cutting the deficit that protects people who rely on government services.

“Important choices must be made: we must weigh the benefits of tax credits for low-i! ncome people and tax breaks for high-income people; of nutrition assistance to low-income families and subsidies to agricultural businesses,” the letter says.

It adds: “Congress can and must develop a balanced and thoughtful path forward that protects the most vulnerable and preserves economic opportunity.”

Jim Wallis, the chief executive of Sojourners, a social justice organization, said the battle over the automatic cuts, called “sequestration,” is “a good but tragic example of how the idea of the common good is failing in American politics.”

Mr. Wallis, who helped to organize the letter from the religious leaders, said he hoped it would convince the president and the lawmakers to consider how to meet their fiscal obligations without hurting the people who need government the most.

“The unity of thefaith community is clear here,” he said. “It is time to move responsibly toward fiscal responsibility and protect the poor at the same time. That is our commitment and our principle; and both political sides should embrace it.”

In a news release set to accompany the letter, several other religious leaders urged the political parties to pay attention.

Kathryn M. Lohre, the president of the National Council of Churches, called it a “scandalous reality” that one in five children are living in poverty in America. In a statement in the news release, Ms. Lohre said that officials should find a way to protect the poor while enhancing the nation’s economic situation.

“We urge our elected leaders to continue to seek financial health for this nation while protecting those who are living at its margins, those whom Jesus called ‘the least of these,’ ” she said. “The fiscal showdowns of recent months fail to honor the fact that 46.2 million of us are already living on the b! rink. Thi! s is not acceptable to us, nor is it acceptable to God.”

Follow Michael D. Shear on Twitter at @shearm.

The Early Word: Rises and Falls

In Today’s Times

• The rise of the current leading black political family in the United States - the Obamas - is inextricable from the unraveling of an older one - the Jacksons - with the two families tangled in shifting alliances, splits and sudden reversals of fortune, Jodi Kantor and Monica Davey report.

•  The fiscal stalemate in Washington is highlighting a significant shift in the Republican Party: deficit hawks now carry more weight than defense hawks, Jonathan Weisman and Ashley Parker report.

• The White House warned that automatic budget cuts scheduled to take effect this week would have a devastating impact on people in every state, framing the real-world test of the importance and value of the federal government, Robert Pear writes.

• One of the biggest threats to the success of President Obama’s health care law comes from a shortage of health care professionals, but the commission created to investigate the shortage has never met in two and a half years because it has no money from Congress or the administration, Robert Pear reports.

Happening in Washington

• President Obama and Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. will deliver remarks to the National Governors Association in the State Dining Room at the White House. Michelle Obama and Jill Biden will speak as well.